


Reconcile

by butyoumight



Series: Since the Ocean is Our Coffin [4]
Category: Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-04
Updated: 2011-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-21 01:12:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/219250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butyoumight/pseuds/butyoumight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>But the more things change, the more they stay the same. Despite everything it always seemed to come back to the two of them, to Marvelous and Joe, the Captain and his First Mate.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Reconcile

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate Universe. Follows up my _[Shuffling Your Deck of Trick Cards](http://archiveofourown.org/series/8684)_ series.

Marvelous isn't the slightest bit surprised that Joe is waiting for him when he finally retires to his quarters. He's fairly sure that Joe has been waiting for him, probably sitting in that exact position on the very edge of Marvelous' bed, since he'd left the main room hours ago.

That exact position is leaning forward, resting his elbows to his knees, with his hands clasped in front of his mouth, peering through the curtain of his bangs, watching the door like a cat waits for a mouse to peek out of its hole.

What does surprise Marvelous is how hard it is to put on his typical devil-may-care attitude. He's under too much pressure, the weight of what he knows and what he plans and Joe's heavy stare. Marvelous smiles, his same old Cheshire grin, but he doesn't think Joe is falling for it. He's sure his eyes are betraying him.

"What are you keeping from me, Marvelous?" Joe finally asks softly, the words muted against his hands. Marvelous crosses the room, shrugging his vest off and tossing it onto a chair in the corner as he goes.

"I have never kept anything from you." Marvelous answers, and it's not a lie, but the truth is tempered by so much misdirection that it sounds the same. No, he's never kept anything from Joe, until tonight.

Marvelous spins and falls onto the bed, spread-eagle but for one leg bent so his knee presses against Joe's thigh. Joe sighs and finally shifts, turning around to kneel beside him. One of Joe's hands move to carefully brush his fingers over the bandage on Marvelous' left cheek, and Marvelous' breath catches in his throat.

"He did this to send me a message." Joe states, and it's true enough that Marvelous doesn't need to confirm nor deny it. "He hurt you."

Marvelous actually laughs, and it's real enough that it draws a skeptical eyebrow twitch from Joe.

"This is nothing. You've hurt yourself worse than this just training." He leaves unspoken the damage Basco had done to Joe, hoping it's obvious enough to them both.

"This is different." Joe's fingertips trail over the bridge of Marvelous' nose to gingerly touch the bandage beneath his eye.

"In what way?" Marvelous asks, and he's genuinely curious as to how Joe's going to answer. He may know Joe better than anyone else in the galaxy, but there were still depths to his first mate that he hadn't yet explored.

Joe blinks, like the question caught him off guard. "It's you." He says this so calmly, so matter-of-fact, and his deeper meaning is clear. Marvelous' skin is more important than his own. Marvelous is more important than he is.

Joe moves to pull his hand away, but Marvelous is faster, grabbing his wrist and pulling his hand down a bit, pressing a gentle kiss into Joe's palm. He can hear the way Joe's breath catches and he smiles, just a small little smirk. He uses his grip on Joe's wrist to pull him down and Joe follows his lead, stretching out beside Marvelous and letting his head rest on the Captain's shoulder.

They lie there quietly for a while, until Marvelous can feel that every time he breathes in, Joe is breathing out. Every time he exhales, Joe is inhaling. It's kind of poetic in a way, and Marvelous smiles at the ceiling as his fingers start to run through the length of Joe's ponytail, so much longer now than it had been when they met.

It's Joe that breaks the comfortable silence, brings the beautiful moment to a close with their harsh reality. "You can't keep me locked up forever."

Marvelous sighs, and it disrupts the perfect symmetry and rhythm of their breaths. "I know that."

"Then why are you trying to?" There's a strange tone to Joe's voice, a pleading note that gives Marvelous a terrible flashback to Joe with his head down and his ribs sticking out too much, Joe breathing so hard he was nearly hyperventilating and Marvelous had known he was trying not to cry.

Trying not to cry for Basco.

Marvelous shifts onto his side to face Joe, winding his arms around Joe's waist and pulling him close. Joe stiffens slightly, after all this time he still has that reflex to shrink away in the face of affection. Marvelous isn't entirely sure where Joe picked up this habit, but he made it a point never to ask.

Joe overrides it soon enough and lets one of his hands move to rest on Marvelous' hip. He's silent, still waiting for an answer, and Marvelous doesn't know what to say. He doesn't have an answer for Joe, not one he can give him anyway, not one Joe would accept or understand.

"Do you want to go back to him?" The question escapes Marvelous before he can think about it, and even he can hear the derisive note in his voice. Marvelous didn't consider himself a particularly heartless person on the whole, but even he can admit that what he'd just said, and how he'd said it, had been cold and unfair.

He doesn't expect an answer, and is startled when Joe's hand tightens on his hip, nearly bruising.

"No." There's a waver in his voice that belies his conviction, and before Marvelous' very eyes Joe seems to deflate, to shrink as his eyes go dark with confusion and very obvious frustration. "Of course I don't." He says this with an air of trying to convince himself. "Do I?"

Marvelous only realized he was holding his breath after he lets it out in a heavy sigh. Joe's eyes are shining with tears now, and Marvelous' heart feels heavy, like it can barely even beat.

"He talks pretty." Marvelous whispers, moving one hand to cup Joe's cheek carefully, brushing his thumb along the nearly imperceptible crescent-shaped scar there. "I know that. But he's evil, Joe, and cruel. He doesn't really care about you. He can't, he's... completely incapable of caring about anything but himself."

Joe closed his eyes like he could hide from the truth Marvelous was speaking. Marvelous shudders to think that maybe he's wrong, or at least that Basco had warped Joe's mind so much as to make him think Basco had ever really cared about him. They didn't ever talk about what had happened in the months Basco had kept Joe captive. Marvelous didn't want to know and Joe didn't want to talk about it. But Marvelous knows how convincing Basco could be, and he wonders.

"He's taken everything from me, time and again." Marvelous knows this much is true, and he puts all the conviction he can muster into those words. "First my Captain, later my crew. My _first mate_. I... I can't let him take you from me again." Marvelous closes his eyes to combat the stinging hint of possible tears. "I'm incomplete without you, Joe. Lost."

"I can't let him hurt you again." Joe whispers. "I have to fix this."

"You can't fix it by giving yourself up to him." Marvelous pulls Joe close, brushes fleeting kisses across Joe's cheeks and nose, down to his mouth. "That would hurt me more than anything else."

"He'll kill you." Joe mumbles against Marvelous' mouth. "He'll kill all of you to get me back."

Marvelous knows it's true, or true enough.

He shifts, pushing Joe onto his back and rolling to lie on top of him. Their chests press together and Marvelous can feel Joe's heart beating in nearly perfect time with his own.

"He'll try." Marvelous breathes, a gentle whisper into Joe's ear. He doesn't mean for it, but he certainly doesn't mind the tremor that runs through Joe's body. "You have to trust me."

Joe shudders again, slipping his arms around Marvelous' waist and holding him close. They both hold their breath when their hips brush together, and then they lock eyes and for just a moment the confused Joe torn by conflicting emotions is gone. Basco's Joe is gone. It's just _his_ Joe there looking up at him, the Joe he'd found scrambling for his life, woefully out matched and near death. The Joe he'd fallen in love with when first he caught sight of that defiant fire in his eyes, even in the face of insurmountable odds, though he hadn't been able to admit it to himself until much later.

" _I trust you._ "

Marvelous isn't even sure if Joe has actually spoken the words or if they'd just passed between them silently, but he knows Joe's thinking and feeling them.

Marvelous turns away, afraid to meet Joe's eyes for a moment, briefly overwhelmed by guilt. He's misleading Joe and he knows it. In this one instance, Joe's blind trust in his Captain is misplaced. Marvelous knows that there's an incredibly probable chance that he won't survive what he's planning to do. He knows that he and Basco are evenly matched and that Basco might emerge victorious, and Joe knows that too. Joe knows, possibly better even than Marvelous himself what Basco is capable of, and Marvelous knows that Joe would never allow Marvelous to take the risk.

But Marvelous has made up his mind, and he sits up, straddling Joe's hips and beginning to unbutton his shirt, suddenly sure of exactly what he needs to do tonight.

Joe can read Marvelous better than anyone else ever has and he immediately sits up, pulling his shirt off over his head and tossing it unceremoniously to the floor. He hovered there for a moment, his toned stomach easily holding his upper body at a shallow angle while his hands move into the wake of Marvelous' own, parting his shirt and tracing indecipherable patterns on his bared skin.

A tremble runs down Marvelous' spine, translates into a shudder and a grinding of his hips, and Marvelous' breath catches when Joe's body responds in turn, his back arching, his hips pressing up to meet Marvelous' and they both give a little moan in perfect tandem, their voices complimenting each other.

Marvelous falls forward, his hands gripping his bed cover on either side of Joe's head. Suddenly frantic, he kisses Joe fiercely, nipping at his bottom lip as he presses their hips purposefully together, drawing another, deeper moan out of Joe and swallowing it, stealing it to keep for himself.

Joe's hands find Marvelous' waist again then trail in, grasping at the clasp of Marvelous' pants. Marvelous laughs into Joe's mouth, a little chuckle of pure mirth, and then shifts to drag his teeth along the sharp line of Joe's jaw, tracing his tongue down over Joe's throat and pressing a fluttering spread of kisses across Joe's collarbones.

Joe succeeds in undoing Marvelous' pants and shoving them down nearly to his knees before his hands move on to the task of unbuckling his own belt, dropping the zipper. He lifts his hips and Marvelous is smart enough to pull back so Joe can kick off his pants, send them cascading clear off the bed.

Marvelous gasps at the heat he finds when he drops back down, grinding against Joe without shame or remorse. This is right, it had been right since that first night, nearly a month after Joe had joined him on the Galleon as his first mate.

Things had certainly changed since then. As each new member had joined the crew, they had all learned new things about themselves. They would pair off in different twos and threes, occasionally Marvelous' bed, as the largest, would play host to all five of them.

But the more things change, the more they stay the same. Despite everything it always seemed to come back to the two of them, to Marvelous and Joe, the Captain and his First Mate. Everyone knew it and no one minded, Luka at least was particularly fond of simply watching the two of them while she pleased herself.

Tonight it's just the two of them. Moving as one, meeting in the middle until their hearts and minds seemed to merge, they seemed to melt in their white-hot passion and actually _become_ one.

Marvelous is incomprehensibly strong, and Joe has all the endurance one would expect from a person who trained and toned his body for so many countless hours. They keep going, all night until they both lose count of the number of times they'd managed to overcome the presumed limits of their bodies and come again. When they've finally spent what seems to be their last reserve, Marvelous curls up against Joe's side, his fingers tangled in the length of his ponytail. They're slick with sweat and sticky with everything else and by the time Joe's breath has eased from heavy panting into the slow regular rhythm of sleep, the sun has fully risen outside the porthole window. It cast eerie shadows on Joe's face and Marvelous hates himself as he presses a gentle kiss to Joe's cheek and leaves the bed, slow and careful so as not to wake him.

Marvelous cleans himself up as best he can before he dresses himself. He assures himself that he has everything he needs and returns to the bed, pulling the comforter over Joe and tucking him in with as much care as a mother would her child.

Before he leaves he presses one more kiss, this one to Joe's forehead, gentle as you please. As he does, Marvelous silently prays to any deity willing to listen to such a brash and prideful pirate that, whatever the outcome, Joe will forgive him.


End file.
